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it’s always intrigued me, the seemingly stark personality difference in biologically male “felines” versus the, generally, more survival oriented (of necessity, and a long, lonnnnnnnnggggg history? From what I’ve noticed, …. in my tiny bubble), physically smaller, more emotive? (really? ..well, at least without the need for a stimulant in order to emote), wary, cautious, female “felines.” (after well too many rapes by ‘the larger of the species’).

He reminds me of a male bunny on his back, stomach being pleased momentarily.

If that ever changes, ..and I confess to wishing towards it, ………I hope it never changes to the extreme, but to a sort of midway balance …..

Oh my, just went to the corner store to stock up on cigs and brew … good thing I bought some beef jerky to heave on (nothing worse than dry heaves if you feel like heaving!) as a response to having glimpsed, on my way in, a hard copy of the San Jose Murky News, yet another Sly Con Valley Cali HeadLiner!, an Obscene Homage, …an Oath Actually,… to Ronnie Reagan (and, very, very vaguely, .. between the lines, Obombster) :

Analysis: Who is the true heir to Ronald Reagan?

By Steven Harmon

Both Reagan and Obama entered office facing the worst recessions since the Great Depression, with unemployment reaching historic numbers. But the economy brightened for Reagan, in time for his Morning in America campaign, and it seems to be turning around for Obama as he gears up his re-election campaign.

(apples work very well if anyone just had the urge to divest their tummy of its content!)

I see the Chicago machine is trying once again with their favorite amputee… I think this is the third try in 8 years…

When Illinois congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth asked her Democratic primary opponent to sign a pledge rejecting the involvement of Super PACs, she also promised to take the same proposal to GOP Rep. Joe Walsh.

“If Duckworth wins the primary, she will offer the same pledge to Congressman Joe Walsh for the general election,” read a Duckworth campaign statement issued February 14 that still sits on her website.

But in an interview with The Daily Herald published Sunday, the Iraq war veteran appeared to back away from that statement after a reporter noted a Super PAC was organizing to defeat Walsh. . . . . .

Cruddas, a generous Tory donor who set up the betting company CMC Markets, was appointed last June as co-treasurer and became treasurer this month. He told the undercover reporters that they should pay £250,000 to gain “premier league” access to Cameron, Osborne and No 10’s policy team.

“Two hundred grand to 250 is premier league … what you would get is, when we talk about your donations, the first thing we want to do is get you at the Cameron/Osborne dinners,” he said.

This could lead to access to dinners at Cameron’s private apartment in Downing Street, Cruddas told the reporters, who were posing as representatives of a fictitious wealth fund.

Once inside, they could ask Cameron “practically any question you want”.

“If you’re unhappy about something, we will listen to you and put it into the policy committee at No 10. We feed all feedback to the policy committee,” he said.

The nasty ass shit…. just writes itself:

Cruddas was last night replaced as treasurer by Lord Fink, a hedge fund manager and former CEO of Man Group. ….

[A]lso Monday, an attorney for Martin’s mother confirmed that she filed trademark applications for two slogans containing her son’s name: “Justice for Trayvon” and “I Am Trayvon.” The applications said the trademarks could be used for such things as DVDs and CDs.

The trademark attorney, Kimra Major-Morris, said in an email that Fulton wants to protect intellectual property rights for “projects that will assist other families who experience similar tragedies.”

My guess is hOllande goes in, things disappear. I don’t know who is going to win…. but from what I read Sarko is getting no bump no surge from Toulouse and Hollande is several pts ahead. Several weeks to go tho…

One thing that has surfaced, via the Orlando Sentinel, is that the Sanford PD DID in fact confiscate Zimmerman’s gun that night and in fact, still have it.

Nobdy seems to know if they took a blood sample or photos of the injuries he claims….

I wouldn’t want to have to pick apart any 16, 17 year old’s life (he had just turned 17), but having painted him as a perfect, more than perfect, angel and used pictures of him that are not exactly the most current, then tried to steamroll, reject, wall off, denounce, whatever came out about him … not the best tactic. Every little thing that surfaces is just drip drip drip.

That would be my guesss…. the family atty, Crump, contacted him directly, they know each other. And my ears pricked up a few days ago when I listened to the parents on some segment. They could not sing Sharpton’s praises enough.

Next up, we enter the land of the absurd. Firstly, we need a law banning Congressional bill titles designed to mislead and misrepresent what the legislation actually does. Such is this latest, the JOBS Act. The JOBS Act doesn’t stand for jobs at all, it’s about removing regulation and safeguards for private capital investment in small businesses and companies trying to start up.

The House bill is actually H.R. 3606, titled Reopening American Capital Markets to Emerging Growth Companies Act of 2011. Believe this or not, the administration has already issued a statement showing support.

The idea is to enable crowd sourcing investing in small businesses and start-ups. Sounds good right? Letting the little guy invest $100 or $500 bucks in a start-up or small business? This would literally take the power away from the elite club of venture capitalists, who often dictate terms such as hires and requiring a business offshore outsource to obtain investment funds. No longer would one have to subject themselves to the below, where on national television no less, an entrepreneur gets shot down for simply wanting to hire U.S. workers and manufacture in the United States.

U.S. legislation that would roll back securities disclosure and governance rules in the name of job creation is being attacked by consumer advocates and former regulators as an evisceration of investor protections in place since the 1930s.

The package of bills awaiting Senate action after receiving broad bipartisan support in a House vote last week would destroy safeguards dating as far back as the laws that created the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to Lynn E. Turner, a former SEC chief accountant.

“It won’t create jobs, but it will simplify fraud,” Turner said in an interview last week. “This would be better known as the bucket-shop and penny-stock fraud reauthorization act of 2012,” he said, referring to practices banned under securities law.

The AFL-CIO is on a tear about this bill. They literally call the bill a scam and point to it risking retirement funds.

Workers’ retirement savings will be in greater risk of fraud and speculation if securities market deregulation once again is railroaded through Congress. Once again our economy will be at risk from the folly of policymakers promoting financial bubbles and ignoring the needs of the real economy.

It seems the bill is really designed to do end runs around financial reform. If this bill passes, as is we will get scam city on penny stocks, ripping off investors through fraudulent investment advertising and false claims. The Young Turks rants out what’s wrong with the Jobs Act, H.R. 3606, in gory detail below.

The author of the piece unfortunately ends it on what I find to be a delusional note that assumes there are actually a handful of senators with a decent bone in their bodies who will attempt to slay the beast.

yup, as we speak it awaits Obombster’s bot sig … I didn’t even bother to check the Senate votes, but do know that A. Eshoo/FaceScan/Googleplex,et al, USA, for one, was a chosen Cali House Rep considered safe to sign it, which of course, she did. ….

“We feel very good about where we stand with the Supreme Court. Look at what happened in the lower courts when they heard this case: Judges Sutton and Silberman asked brutally tough questions during oral arguments and then they ruled in our favor. The armchair Court-watchers love to make predictions, but there is a long list of cases where the pundits have been wrong. For example, after the oral arguments in a voting rights case in 2009, everyone predicted the government would lose. We ended up winning 8-1. Yesterday was what we expected – tough questions for attorneys on both sides of the issue. Ultimately, we are confident we will win.”

And this sterling addition from the swamps:

JAMES CARVILLE, to Wolf Blitzer, on the possibility of health reform being overturned:

“I honestly believe — this is not spin. I think that this will be the best thing to ever happen to the Democratic Party because health care costs will escalate unbelievably. [clue! they. already. have.! it can only get worse, ACA or not! – Mcat] …

[T]he Republican Party will own the health care system for the foreseeable future. And I really believe that, that is not spin. Go see Scalia when you want health care.” (hat tip: Darius Dixon)

I suggest a yellow and black caution sign for the WH, the DNC, Charlotte and all points E, W, S and N:

Caution! Slimeballs forming inside! Proceed, much less vote for same, at own risk!!

I can’t remember if it was Carville or Begala who pushed Blair up agaisnt a wall and told him, on his first US visit post Monica, to do whatever it took to help save the Clinton pretzeldencia…. (think who ever did it also put his arm across Blair’s neck)

I jsut loved it that a bit of truth slipped out and I forget where I found it. SOme book I think…

Carville is a true, toxic swamp lizard, no doubt with a direct sout’ern bloodline to the Newtster …and then there’s his Nasty ass wife too, Mary ™ is it? ….Reading about that Coupling ™, in the late nineties, was my first intro to the DemRat/ReThug Shell Game that is so Historic.

(Reuters) – The guarantee of landline telephone service at almost any address, a legal right many Americans may not even know they have, is quietly being legislated away in our U.S. state capitals.

AT&T and Verizon, the dominant telephone companies, want to end their 99-year-old universal service obligation known as “provider of last resort.” ….

Unless the new rules are written very carefully, millions of people, urban and rural, will lose basic telephone service or be forced to pay much more for calls.

Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin already have repealed universal service obligations. No one has been cut off yet, but once almost every state has ended universal service I am sure we will see parts of the landline system shut down.

Years of subtle incremental legal changes have brought the telephone companies within sight of ending universal service, which began in 1913 when AT&T President Thomas Vail promised “one system, one policy, universal service” in return for keeping Ma Bell’s monopoly.

AT&T wants universal service obligations to end wherever two or more voice services are available, said Joel Lubin, AT&T’s public policy vice president. Verizon promotes a similar approach.

INTENSE LOBBYING

State capitals are seeing intense lobbying to end universal service obligations but with little public awareness due to the dwindling ranks () of statehouse () reporters.

The Utility Rate Network, a consumer advocate group, identified 120 AT&T lobbyists in Sacramento, one per California lawmaker. Mary Pat Regan, president of AT&T Kentucky, told me she has 36 lobbyists in that state working on the company’s bill to end universal landline service.

People whose landline service ends would have three options.

First would be a cell phone, a reasonable substitute in many areas [I don’t agree with that assessment, and can think of all sorts of reasons why; for just one, those who may have a restraining order out, whose privacy could be a matter of life and death – diane]. But cell phones do not work in Appalachian valleys and many rural expanses. Cell phones cost at least $25 for limited minutes, while lifeline services – which the companies offer to low-income people – start at $2 and, with unlimited local calls, at about $10.

Second would be Internet calling. That requires broadband Internet service. Verizon charges $49.99, plus additional charges by unregulated calling companies like Vonage, whose rates start at $25.99. On top of this $75 expense would be taxes and the cost of buying and maintaining a computer, a device alien to many older and poor Americans [oh just fuck the older and poor, haven’t they all just finally died yet? – diane].

Third would be satellite service. Thomas Hazlett, a George Mason University economist who studies rural phone costs, tells me satellite service is “the way to go for service in outlying areas.” Maybe, but it requires a computer, costs at least $29.95 and tens of thousands of users have complained about unauthorized charges and connection problems.

AT&T and Verizon also want to end state authority to resolve customer complaints, saying the market will punish bad behavior. Tell that to Stefanie Brand.

Brand is New Jersey’s ratepayer advocate whose experience trying to get another kind of service – FiOS – demonstrates what happens when market forces are left to punish behavior, she said. Residents of her apartment building wanted to get wired for the fiber optic service (FiOS) in 2008. Residents said, “We want to see your plans before you start drilling holes, and Verizon said, ‘We will drill where we want or else, so we’re walking,’ and they did,” Brand told me.

Verizon confirmed that because of the disagreement Brand’s building is not wired. And there’s nothing Brand can do about it. Verizon reminded me the state Board of Public Utilities no longer has authority to resolve complaints over FiOS.

Market forces cannot discipline this kind of one-sided power.

Verizon says that New Jersey requires it to wire only 70 cities. What will happen to the elderly and disadvantaged with no place to appeal for help when telephone service is degraded, denied or cut off?

Without universal landline service, many poor and rural people will lose connectedness to family and work, …

… when the sick, disabled and elderly cannot summon help immediately because they lack phone service. Hours of delay after, say, a stroke can turn a modest hospital bill into a huge expense for Medicare, Medicaid or the Veterans Administration. Some people without phones will die unnecessarily.

… customers paid for the landline telephone system, including many billions of dollars in rate increases over the past two decades that helped AT&T and Verizon develop their cellular systems.

“The best way to keep the political margins in the ballot game
Is to scare them about supreme appointments”

It goes back to what Malcolm X said about Johnson vs Goldwater, that no one would run to the fox unless you showed them the wolf, though both want to eat you. That’s where guys like Limbaugh come in. He’s not just there to induce chest-thumping and fist-pumping among the lower primates, but to scare the shit out of liberals and make them run to the fox. The reality TV show known as the Supreme Court is similarly scripted to make it seem like there’s actually some kind of spontaneous struggle going on between left and right in there, when it’s as orchestrated as a classical symphony.

well, the insane monetary caste system we humans have bound ourselves with was/is a choice of sorts, but yeah .. I get your point, it’s all much like a snowball rolling down a 20,000 foot high, snow encased mountain at this point, an avalanche.

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.